how would you light such a scene?

Question

I'm trying to build a light setup to get a render like this reference:

Background gradient, a lot of light on the front and quite dark and blue shadows.

But I'm not sure how to achieve it. Eg : what type of "world" would you use ? Would you use a gradient, or a solid color, and which one ? What kind of lamp ? Is a sun enough ?

Well, any tip/lighting advice is welcome. Here's what I got for know, which is not exactly what I would like to get.. :/

And my Blend here (I got the city on Blendswap).

Thanks !

Answer 1

Final

Lights

As a light use Sun Lamp with Size 0. This will make shadows completely sharp. I've also changed Strength to 2.

World

For World I've used simple Linear Gradient to look similar to your reference image. This will give blueish tint to whole image, but we will take care of it later.

Compositing:

First of all you will need to give your objects same Pass Index. Take a look here how to do it: Object ID to a whole group.

And check Object Index under Render Layers > Passes.

Now we can use our objects as mask for Color Correction and reduce unnecessary saturation for shadows/highlights and everything we need without affecting World Background.